Podcast: Is Cryptocurrency a Security (like an orange grove)?
On Friday, January 17, 2024, President Donald J. Trump announced the launch of the $TRUMP memecoin, which was organized and sold by CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization. Within 60 hours, $TRUMP reportedly...more
Key Points - In a thorough decision, a federal district judge in New York largely denied Coinbase’s motion for judgment on the pleadings in a case brought by the SEC. Applying the plaintiff-friendly standards required at the...more
Key Points - In SEC v. Terraform, the court has granted summary judgment for the SEC on its claim that the defendants offered and sold unregistered securities in the form of “crypto assets.” This comes amidst the SEC...more
Late last year, the SEC filed a litigated action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executive officers (collectively, “Ripple”), alleging that Ripple...more
When assessing whether a digital asset is a security, the key question to ask is whether a third party is driving the expectation of a return, says a senior Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official....more
The Situation: The Director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Corporate Finance, William Hinman, has weighed in on when digital assets will be characterized as securities. The Result: In...more
During a speech in San Francisco last week at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit, William Hinman, Director of the Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), provided some welcome...more
The ICO boom in 2017 brings with it questions of jurisdiction and compliance, and a need for further guidance - The benefits of ICOs in raising capital, as well as in providing a marketing push for a new business model,...more
What Is an ICO? An ICO, or initial coin offering, is the sale of virtual coins or tokens, often as a means of capital raising by startup companies that are involved in blockchain technology. Depending on the terms of the...more